Table 1.

Themes that encompass health-related quality of life among HIV positive patients, and the associations with clinical and psychological outcomes, and medical HIV-related health outcomes, including the expected directions of the associations (positive or negative)

Themes	Clinical and psychological outcomes	HIV-related health outcomes
Quality of life (physical and mental health)	Stigma (−) [54, 62] Social support (+) [51, 62, 63]  Physical health [64] Self-esteem (+) [65] Sexuality problems (−) [66] Anxiety and depression (−) [51] Sleeping difficulties (−) [67] Perceived side-effects (−) [51, 68]	Disease severity (−)  Physical health [69] Treatment adherence (+)  Mental health [64]
Stigma	Quality of life (−) [44, 54, 55] Social support (−) [25, 43, 44, 54, 62, 70] Self-esteem (−) [25, 43, 44, 54] Sexuality problems (+) [66] Anxiety and depression (+) [25, 54, 62, 70, 71] Sleeping difficulties (no association found) Perceived side-effects (+) [54]	Engagement in care (−) [72] Treatment adherence (−) [43, 72] HIV symptoms (+) [70]
Social support	Quality of life (+) [73] Self-esteem (+) [43, 44] Sexuality problems (no association) Anxiety and depression (−) [43, 62, 71] Sleeping difficulties (∓) [74] Perceived side-effects (−) [63]	Indirect effect, offer coping mechanism for other themes that do affect medical HIV outcomes directly [43, 44, 65, 73]
Self-esteem	Quality of life (+) [44] Sexuality problems (−) [75] Anxiety and depression (−) [44] Sleeping difficulties (−) [76] Perceived side-effects (no association)
Sexuality problems	Quality of life (−) [66, 77] Anxiety and depression (+) [66] Sleeping difficulties (+) [78] Perceived side-effects (+) [66]	Treatment adherence (−) [66, 79]
Anxiety and depression	Quality of life (−) [71, 80, 81] Sleeping difficulties (+) [82] Perceived side-effects (+) [83]	Treatment adherence (−) [84] Treatment outcomes (−), functionality (−), and mortality (+) [71]
Sleeping difficulties	Quality of life (−) [5, 77] Perceived side-effects (+) [79]	Disease severity (+) [77, 79]
Perceived side-effects	Quality of life (−) [79]	Treatment adherence (−) [79, 85]

The plus (+) and minus (−) signs reflect the directions of the associations (positive or negative). For example, Stigma (−) in the first column and row means a negative association between quality of life and stigma, as quality of life increases stigma decreases

HIV human immunodeficiency virus